Peter Singer is the Ira W. Decamp Professor of Bioethics at Princeton and Laureate Professor at the University of Melbourne. His books include Animal Liberation, Practical Ethics, The Most Good You Can Do, and, most recently, Famine, Affluence, and Morality. (May 2016)

IN THE REVIEW

The Humane Economy: How Innovators and Enlightened Consumers Are Transforming the Lives of Animals

by Wayne Pacelle

In The Humane Economy Wayne Pacelle, president and CEO of the country’s largest animal protection organization, the Humane Society of the United States, describes how “capitalism at its best” is a force against animal suffering, “applying human creativity to answer the demands of a morally informed market.” Is he right?

Project Nim

a film directed by James Marsh

“Men have forgotten this truth,” said the fox. “But you must not forget it. You become responsible, forever, for what you have tamed.” —Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince Perhaps Herbert Terrace, professor of psychology at Columbia University, and director of the experiment that is the subject of Project Nim, …

NYR DAILY

Access to the Internet, and the prosecution of Aaron Swartz for the crimes he was alleged to have committed in advancing that cause, are not the only, and perhaps not even the most important, issues raised by Swartz’s death. A third is depression.

Project Nim, a new documentary by James Marsh, tells the sad story of a scientist’s irresponsible treatment of Nim, the chimp he tamed—or more strictly, whose upbringing in a human family he organized—and it raises important issues about the distinction between humans and animals, about our attitudes toward animals, and about scientific objectivity (or the lack thereof) in behavioral research.